Tag Archives: Bus

What Was Hezbollah Thinking?

Did you hear? According to a top notch Bulgarian investigative panel, we are now resisting Israel -all the way in Bulgaria.
It doesn’t make sense to you? No worries, it’s not supposed to. It’s only supposed to make sense to Hezbollah and apparently it does.

Long gone are the days when we await Israeli confrontation in order for our men to bravely fight for our land and lose their lives in the process. Long gone are the days when resisting Israel happens from our own land, the South, which pays heavily every single time we resist.

Today, the only question I can ask is: what the hell was Hezbollah thinking?

Whenever my country enters into a war with Israel, I will stand by my people and my land no matter what. Whether they are right or wrong, whether they started it or not – for the entire duration of the war, I will stand by them. When the war is over though, another story unfolds.

I cannot, however, as a Lebanese support the blowing up of the Bulgaria bus incident no matter what possible explanation is provided for the operation .

Where does Hezbollah want to take the country with this action?
Do they really think the country can handle have one of the main parties in the government to be labeled as a terrorist organization by the European Union?
What repercussions will that have on our fragile political balance, on our economy? How does it reflect on the government that Hezbollah did the operation while in power without anyone else in the government knowing about it, similarly to the 2006 war?

7 years have not taught us anything.

Why did Hezbollah want to kill a bunch of Israeli tourists? Is us resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestine now contingent upon us killing as many civilians as possible? What’s the fault of a tourist for being the citizen of a country we don’t approve of? How does us killing civilians differ us from all those terrorist groups whose goal in life is to cause as many innocent casualties as possible?

I don’t think Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. I do not agree with many of their practices but when it matters the most, I cannot but be grateful for defending my country.
But our support as Lebanese for reckless practices should not be unconditional especially when the repercussions of such actions do not reflect on Hezbollah alone but on the entire country as well.

Imagine the following scenario: Lebanese friends from different sects and regions decide to hop on a plane to Paris. While touring the city in a bus, the bus blows up and they all die. The Mossad is to blame.
Far-fetched, perhaps. But do we really want to take the war with Israel to people whose only fault is being a national of one side of the conflict?

What the hell was Hezbollah thinking? I, for one, can’t come up with convincing answers because I really can’t think how this is any good for them in any way. And if they can actually reach other countries and act this powerfully, which I can’t really wrap my head around, why don’t they do things that are more “useful?”

What I hope for though is for the party to come up with proof that the entire investigation was a politicized fabrication especially with the very fast condemnations from Israelis and Americans. Unlikely and foolish, perhaps, but I’m hopeful that one of my country’s main parties is not that short-sighted to land themselves as a terrorist group all around the world.

The Lebanese Civil War Synthesis

April 13th marks the anniversary of the Lebanese Civil War.

On this day, most Lebanese repeat the phrase: “let it be remembered but not repeated”.

As part of my understanding of that phrase, I decided to write up one one of the civil war incidents that touched my family deeply. My uncle was shot and his cousin killed on the same day, April 2nd.

I wrote the story in three parts. And I hoped that they would show what one Lebanese family went through on one one day of the war that lasted for over 15 years. I did not mention extra details about the political parties involved in my story: who was bombing, who was defending… because I wanted to show the Civil War as not a period where some people were right and others were wrong. It’s a period where the Lebanese person, as a whole, got hurt, deeply. It’s a period where Lebanese families were torn and the country was ruined – regardless of religion and sect and political affiliation. You can read the story here: part 1, part 2 and part 3.

Today marks the 36th anniversary for the civil war, which started on April 13th 1975 with the Ain Remmaneh Bus incident. Some people actually believe the bus incident was the main cause for the war. But that is not true. If anything that incident was only the face of a much deeper divide on a country that praises itself for its richness and diversity.

I have not lived through the civil war. So my personal understanding of whatever took place is rather limited. Nor do I want to know too much because well, it is time that we, as a society, move forward from the wounds caused by that era.

Continue reading →